In the last several years, credit card fees have been getting ridiculous. That’s because the credit card companies have had free reign to charge just about anything they wanted. They’ve also been able to hide much of it from us by burying the details in long-winded fine print and legalese.

But now, things are changing in the consumer’s favor. Predatory and borderline ethical practices are being scrutinized and there’s a real chance that change is coming. Maybe there’s a way we can help ourselves a bit in the meantime though. Let’s see if we can avoid credit card fees altogether by using prepaid debit cards. Here’s what I propose.

It may not be easy to do, but if you can, shut down your credit card spending. Buy a prepaid debit card and, little by little (or faster), switch the purchases you usually make on your credit card over to the prepaid card. At the same time arrange to make your credit card payments automatically and well before the billing date. Then, when the switch is complete, take the credit card out of your wallet and don’t use it again.

This will not only give you some peace of mind but it will also get you off the credit card fee merry-go-round. Fees you see are how these companies make their money and that, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. But the credit card companies stack the deck against you and manipulate you into positions where you’re actually tricked into some fees. Let’s take a case in point, the over-limit fee.

An over-limit fee is the penalty fee you’re charged whenever you run up your balance over your credit limit. Since you can do this pretty easily, your “limit” obviously isn’t really a hard and fast number. Rather, it’s more of a threshold that triggers extra fees from the company. Then, if you just pay the minimum payment (which the company so conveniently calculates for you) you’ll drop below the limit right? Well, not quite. You see, often the next finance charge will send your balance right back over the limit and guess what? You got it, you get charged another over-limit fee. It’s pretty sneaky if you ask me. If you used a prepaid debit card, that scenario would never happen.

Prepaid cards don’t come with tricky monthly finance/billing cycle calculations either. These are the computations the credit card companies make to determine how much they’re going to charge you to carry your balance from one month to the next. There are actually 6 or 7 different ways these charges can be calculated and everyone is designed to yield the highest return for the company based on your spending habits.

Another great (and hidden) fee the credit card companies receive is the interchange fee. These are pretty much secret fees that businesses pay the companies to cover the actual credit card transaction costs. Then of course the businesses pass the expense onto their customers by charging higher prices. There are some estimates that say consumers pay about $2.00 in interchange fees for every $100.00 they spend with a credit card. That $2.00 adds up to tens of billions every year for these companies.

Consumers have virtually no leverage when it comes to dealing with credit card companies. The only real thing any of us can do is to take our business elsewhere. And we can’t do that completely if we can’t completely pay off our balances. But we can begin to do it if we make the change to prepaid debit cards. If we make that commitment, make that switch, we can start to regain control over our own financial future. It won’t happen overnight, but with some diligence, it will happen.

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